Posted on 04/13/2004 3:24:07 PM PDT by MegaSilver
India has publicly requested that the United States halt the increasing practice of outsourcing call centers handling customer support. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's mention of what he called the "unexpected controversies" generated over the issue came days after remarks critical of India by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick over the outsourcing issue.
"Outsourcing makes businesses more competitive, and we thought the influx of high-paying jobs was a good idea at first," Vajpayee said. "But the cost to our society has been enormous."
Outsourcing is the relocation of American jobs to lower-paid workers in different parts of the world. Seeking to cut costs, companies from the United States and other Western countries have hired about 170,000 workers in India over the past few years for jobs such as telemarketing, and customer-support services. The figure is expected to reach 1.1 million by 2008, industry groups say.
India is a popular location for outsourcing call centers because it has a skilled workforce fluent in English. Many companies, in fact, provide extensive coaching to their Indian employees in order to create the illusion that the help centers are located in the United States.
“They help them acquire regional American accents and cultural references," said Mandy Tomarski, professor of economics at the University of Iowa. "Many Indian workers take pride in emulating these accents and personas, even going to far as to study local details and cultural references so they can, for example, pretend they are from Minnesota."
The trend has gone too far, according to Vajpayee.
"These call-center and customer support workers have trained so hard to act American on the telephone that they have essentially become Americans," lamented the prime minister. "It is as if we suddenly had a huge influx of American immigrants. The cultural ramifications have been overwhelming."
The Americanized workers have been demanding reduced schedules which are closer to the typical forty-hour American work week. They have also fueled a sharp rise in fast-food outlets and litigation.
"They are rude, they are suing everyone in sight, they are watching the Fox network via satellite TV," Vajpayee complained. "Their health has also declined and they no longer fit into most chairs. Please, please stop doing this to us."
"The Indians have absolutely no right to complain because they don't belong to the government procurement code in the World Trade Organization," Zoellick told the Senate finance committee. "They wanted these jobs; they got them. America's a package deal, baby. Take it or leave it."
A more appropriate question would be, why SHOULDN'T it be? It is an important debate and deserves attention and critical thought. Simply insisting that it's nothing to worry about is not going to make people stop worrying about it.
Yes, I know that.
Are you some kind of communist thinking that companies should work for the "greater good" instead of their own best interests?
First of all, I never said that I thought outsourcing was bad. I was defending those who chose to criticize it:
A more appropriate question would be, why SHOULDN'T it be [criticized]? It is an important debate and deserves attention and critical thought. Simply insisting that it's nothing to worry about is not going to make people stop worrying about it.
I could add to that last sentence, "Simply making ad hominem and straw man attacks" against people who disagree with you."
Now, with that out of the way, I shall admit that I do have concerns about outsourcing. I am not a blanket protectionist. I do not know enough about business or economics to take a definitive stance. I am happy to hear debate about free trade from both sides. But when free-trade advocates accuse me (or a true protectionist) of being a "communist" or "national socialist" (you are not the first), they do not warm me up to their point of view.
For the record, though, communism and national socialism do not work because they are ideologies. Same with libertarianism. I am a conservative, which means I am skeptical of ANY ideological political viewpoint; I believe in permanence over progress. Complete free trade sounds to me like it might be something too far into the libertarian camp, but I don't know. I would like to know, which is why I welcome debate. Debate is impeded by pointless ad hominem attacks like "you communist" or "you national socialist."
I'm certain you know nothing about staffing a call center in the USA. I worked for a company for 3 year which provided staff to call centers. I don't blame these companies one bit for outsourcing to India or the Philipinnes. I'm certain those workers come to work everyday and don't cause all the problems that the average fat, lazy American call center worker does.
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